Richard Dawkins said about New Atheism, "[O]ur struggle is not so much an intellectual struggle, as a political one: What are we going to do about it?”.[4]

Commenting on the New Atheism and British/United States politics, Steven Kettell wrote in the journal Secularism and Nonreligion:

“

...both countries have also experienced a rising influence of religion in the public sphere since the turn of the century. In the U.S this has centered on the role of the Christian Right, especially under the administration of George W. Bush. In Britain, issues of multiculturalism and faith schools have been particularly prominent. In this context, new atheism can be said to represent something of a defensive rear-guard action, an attempt to push back against the encroaching forces of faith, and a response to a world that, as Aronson (2008) observes, “no longer seems to be going our way”.[5]

”

The four most prominent writers of the New Atheist movement are Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett and they have commonly been called "the four horsemen" of New Atheism. PZ Myers dubbed himself the fifth horseman of the New Atheism movement, but the term never caught on and he was mocked by some fellow atheists such as Michael Nugent.[6]

A number of prominent authors and scientists have published books in the past year that advocate a "New Atheism." The books, which include Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, and Christopher Hitchens's God is Not Great, have sparked considerable public controversy across the political spectrum.[7]

Richard Osling wrote about the book The Evolution of Atheism: The Politics of a Modern Movement published by the Oxford University Press:

“

The tables are turned in a new book, “The Evolution of Atheism: The Politics of a Modern Movement” (Oxford University Press). Journalists: It’s heady stuff to be a hook for news treatment, but worth the effort.

The book analyzes atheistic causes in North America over the past century, including its internal schisms and contradictions. The work is based on Canadian author Stephen LeDrew’s doctoral dissertation at York University in Ontario and post-doctoral study in Sweden at Uppsala University’s Center for the Study of Religion and Society.

Religion newswriters are well aware that those aggressive “New Atheists” sometimes suggest faith is not just stupid but morally evil or a sort of mental illness, such that parents should be forbidden to infect their own children with it. Journalists may be surprised to learn that for LeDrew and others, this sort of anti-religion thinking is outdated and “utterly out of sync with contemporary social science.”

Social scientists long embraced the “secularization thesis,” according to which religion will inevitably decline as modern science advances. But now, says LeDrew, many acknowledge that scenario was “a product of ideology” rather than empirical fact. Thus, the New Atheism could be seen as a promotional effort to defend against “a perceived failure of secularism in practice in late modern society.”... When examined closely, he sees the New Atheism as “secular fundamentalism, a modern utopian ideology” that’s “essentially political.”...

To LeDrew, current atheism is much more than a mere critique of religious faith or absence of belief. It “ignores the reservoirs of knowledge offered by the social sciences, which add complexities to our understanding of religion that the New Atheists prefer to ignore, indulging in the kind of willful ignorance that they disparage religion for promoting.” Therefore, it’s “an ideology,” defined as “a schematic or rigid framework of preconceived ideas that shape, and thus distort, understanding.” It must exclude social scientists’ thinking about religion and obscure “social reality.”[9]

”

New Atheism as a reaction to the religious right in the United States

Elizabeth Bruenig wrote in her New Republic article Is the New Atheism Dead?:

“

New Atheists were especially incensed by the dominance of the Christian right in America, with sociologists George Yancey and David Williamson arguing in a 2013 book that GOP-centric Christian conservatism had helped shape its own antagonist through its prominent place in American politics. For a time at least, it seemed that tensions between the stridently non-religious and the ardently faithful would only continue to rise.

Which makes today’s relative placidity between the non-religious and religious so remarkable.
[10]

Social science research indicates that antitheists score the highest among atheists when it comes to personality traits such as narcissism, dogmatism, and anger.[12][13] Furthermore, they scored lowest when it comes to agreeableness and positive relations with others.[14]

Using special text analysis software, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt found that new atheists very often wrote in dogmatic terms in their major works using words such as “always,” “never,” “certainly,” “every,” and “undeniable.”[15] Of the 75,000 words in Sam Harris's The End of Faith, 2.24% of them connote or are associated with certainty.[16]

New Atheism and its reputation for shallow arguments

Despite the frequent expressions of certainty by new atheists. New Atheism has a reputation for shallow arguments. A frequent occurrence is that the works of new atheists often betray an amateurish knowledge of philosophy/religion.[17][18] For example, atheist philosopher Dr. Michael Ruse declared concerning new atheist Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion: "The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist."[19]Vox Day's book The Irrational atheist found multiple errors in reasoning and factual errors when it came to the works of new atheist authors.[20] See also: Atheism and irrationality

New Atheism and the media

The new atheists Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins had prior experience dealing with the media and used the media to promote their best-selling new atheist books and to create a high level of media interest in the New Atheism movement.[21]

New Atheism movement and contention between atheist men and women

Founders of the New Atheism movement Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, have elevated the amount of contention between men and women within the atheist population and there are now frequently complaints from women that there is a significant amount of misogny within the atheist community and that its leadership is too heavily populated with men.[22][23][24]

Richard Dawkins and Elevatorgate

David Allen Green wrote: "Can Richard Dawkins still credibly pose as a champion of rational thinking and an evidence-based approach? In my opinion, he certainly cannot, at least not in the way he did before."[25]

Elevatorgate is a term commonly used to describe a scandal involving new atheist Richard Dawkins' 2011 comments made to atheist Rebecca Watson which are perceived to have been inappropriate by a sizable portion of the atheist community and to the public at large.[26]

According to Rebecca Watson atheist women are often punished for being outspoken - particularly when they speak about feminism.[28] In August 2013, Watson said the harassment she received from male atheists skyrocketed after Elevatorgate.[29]

Furthermore, she said she still receives harassment from male fans of Richard Dawkins.[30] The atheist feminist Sikivu Hutchinson concurs with Watson and says that sexual harassment has been institutionalized within the atheist movement and that atheist men have an investment in censoring, controlling and policing women and also have an investment in "male privilege".[31]

Elevatorgate and negative press

The New Statesman reporter and fellow skepticDavid Allen Green said he believed Dawkins was a misogynist and a racist.[32] In addition, Green wrote: "Can Richard Dawkins still credibly pose as a champion of rational thinking and an evidence-based approach? In my opinion, he certainly cannot, at least not in the way he did before."[33]

New Atheism and charges of Islamophobia

According to Pew Forum, by 2030 Muslims are projected to make up 8% of Europe’s population.[42] See also: Atheism vs. Islam

The new atheists Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens have received multiple accusations of engaging in Islamophobic behavior.[43] Dawkins is dismissive of the concept of Islamophobia and declared: "I’m always being accused of Islamophobia, that’s a non-word."[44]

On December 28, 2015, the Daily Express reported about Dawkins:

“

The furious academic walked out of an interview when a Muslim journalist confirmed he personally believed the prophet Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse.

Dawkins, 74, author of best-seller The God Delusion, told the New Statesmen's Emad Ahmed that his belief was "pathetic" before angrily storming off.[45]

”

On the other hand, defenders of atheist criticisms of Islam/Muslims indicated that New Atheists should be able to criticize Islam without being accused of Islamophobia.[46]

Christopher Hitchens displayed provocative rhetoric and bloodlust towards radical Islamacists.[47] At the opening of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Hitchens said of radical Islamacists, "It is a pleasure and a duty to kill these people".[48] Hitchens said of Iran, "As for that benighted country, I wouldn't shed a tear if it was wiped off the face of this earth”.[49]

On June 21, 2014 Harris published an article on his website entitled Response to Critics which was a response to his critics who accuse him of Islamophobia.[50]

New Atheism seen as a narrow and dogmatic religion

Using special text analysis software, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt found that New Atheists very often wrote in dogmatic terms in their major works using words such as “always,” “never,” “certainly,” “every,” and “undeniable.”[51] Of the 75,000 words in Sam Harris's The End of Faith, 2.24% of them connote or are associated with certainty.[52]
In a 2014 New Republic article entitled The Closed Mind of Richard Dawkins: His atheism is its own kind of narrow religion, the atheist philosopher John Gray wrote:

“

One might wager a decent sum of money that it has never occurred to Dawkins that to many people he appears as a comic figure. His default mode is one of rational indignation—a stance of withering patrician disdain for the untutored mind of a kind one might expect in a schoolmaster in a minor public school sometime in the 1930s. He seems to have no suspicion that any of those he despises could find his stilted pose of indignant rationality merely laughable. “I am not a good observer,” he writes modestly. He is referring to his observations of animals and plants, but his weakness applies more obviously in the case of humans. Transfixed in wonderment at the workings of his own mind, Dawkins misses much that is of importance in human beings—himself and others.[53]

Cultish characteristics

The New Atheism movement, which has waned in recent years, was called a cult by the agnostic, journalist Bryan Appleyard in a 2012 article in the New Statesman in which he describes the abusive behavior of New Atheists.[54] Although the New Atheism movement does not perfectly fit the various characteristics of a cult, it does fit some of the characteristics.[55]

Sociologist Stephen LeDrew on New Atheism and intolerance

The sociologist Stephen LeDrew declared about the new atheists:

“

As I got to know these thinkers better, I began to see some of their ideas as quite dangerous—such as the intolerance they have for cultural diversity and some seeds of social Darwinism. So part of the motivation for it was that I think atheism can do much better than people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.[56]

New Atheism and morality

The author and poet Michael Robbins declares about the morality of new atheist Richard Dawkins:

“

Nietzsche’s atheism is far from exultant—he is not crowing about the death of God, much as he despises Christianity. He understands how much has been lost, how much there is to lose.

. . . Nietzsche realized that the Enlightenment project to reconstruct morality from rational principles simply retained the character of Christian ethics without providing the foundational authority if the latter. Dispensing with his fantasy of the Übermensch, we are left with his dark diagnosis. To paraphrase the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, our moral vocabulary has lost the contexts from which its significance derived, and no amount of Dawkins-style hand-waving about altruistic genes will make the problem go away. (Indeed, the ridiculous belief that our genes determine everything about human behavior and culture is a symptom of this very problem.)

. . . The point is not that a coherent morality requires theism, but that the moral language taken for granted by liberal modernity is a fragmented ruin: It rejects metaphysics but exists only because of prior metaphysical commitments.[57]

A veneer of secular morality rooted in subjective preferences hardly counts as “foundational authority,” meaning that Coyne again fails to refute Robbins’s point. In fact, that morality is anchored to such a subjective foundation means that secular morality is not significantly different from a cultural dress code. The “veneer of secular morality” is just a way for the collective to impose order and conformity on a population of individuals. And if secular morality is nothing more than that, we get to the core problem with atheism – the dress code known as morality simply ceases to be important. That is, if an atheist believes X is wrong, they can easily ignore and dismiss it if it becomes inconvenient to refrain from doing X.

We have already seen a concrete example of this. Richard Dawkins believes that eating meat is wrong. He even compares the eating of meat to owning a slave![58]

”

Immaturity of new atheists

“

Nü Atheism is an adolescent movement. The adults who follow it have adolescent (or pre-adolescent) temperaments and personalities (Maher, Dawkins, Gervais, Myers etc) and it's grown in popularity since you have a large generational cohort reaching young adulthood and seeking to set themselves apart from their parents. But it's reactionary and petulant. A pose, not a philosophy.

Decline of New Atheism

On November 6, 2015, the New Republic published an article entitled, Is the New Atheism dead?[60]

In 2015, the atheist author Joshua Kelly wrote:

“

...since the death of Hitchens: angry atheism lost its most charismatic champion. Call it what you like: New Atheism, fire-brand atheism, etc., had a surge with the Four Horsemen in the middle of the last decade and in the last four years has generally peetered out to a kind that is more docile, politically correct, and even apologetic.[61]

I'm not sure there is anything in this movement worth saving. Hitchens is dead. Dawkins simply doesn't have the energy for this sort of thing anymore. Harris went his own way. And Dennett just kind of blended into the background. So what do you think when the largest gathering of the nonreligious in history pulls in... I don't know. Maybe 2,000 people. Is there anything worth saving?[62]

As far as PZ Myers losing influence, in April 2015, Atheist Ireland announced, "Atheist Ireland is publicly dissociating itself from the hurtful and dehumanising, hateful and violent, unjust and defamatory rhetoric of the atheist blogger PZ Myers."[63] The atheist biologist Massimo Pigliucci said of Myers, "one cannot conclude this parade without mentioning P.Z. Myers, who has risen to fame because of a blog where the level of nastiness (both by the host and by his readers) is rarely matched anywhere else on the Internet...".[64] Myers' also lost favor among his fellow atheists after his inappropriate remarks about the death of the popular comedian Robin Williams.[65][66] Myers is one of the more prominent bloggers at Freethoughtblogs and the blogging website has been losing a significant amount of web traffic since 2012 according to Quantcast which directly measures its web traffic.[67]

We seem to be witnessing a broad reaction against the New Atheism movement by atheists as well as religious believers, whether undermining the idea of a long-standing conflict between science and religion, or taking a critical view of their political agenda. James Ryerson recently examined three new books (including my own) in the New York Times Book Review – a small sample of a growing body of work.[68]

”

In addition, New Atheism's abrasiveness/aggressiveness caused it to wore thin over time in terms of its public relations (see also: Atheism and public relations).

Theo Hobson on young atheists and the New Atheism approach

The atheist spring that began just over a decade ago is over, thank God. Richard Dawkins is now seen by many, even many non-believers, as a joke figure...

Atheism is still with us. But the movement that threatened to form has petered out. Crucially, atheism’s younger advocates are reluctant to compete for the role of Dawkins’s disciple. They are more likely to bemoan the new atheist approach and call for large injections of nuance. A good example is the pop-philosopher Julian Baggini. He is a stalwart atheist who likes a bit of a scrap with believers, but he’s also able to admit that religion has its virtues, that humanism needs to learn from it. For example, he has observed that a sense of gratitude is problematically lacking in secular culture, and suggested that humanists should consider ritual practices such as fasting.[69]

”

Impact of the New Atheism

The New Atheism has not had much of an impact in terms of gaining new adherents to atheism. In a March 10, 2008 USA Today article Stephen Prothero stated the following regarding the impact of the "New Atheism":

“

Numbers lie, but they also tell tales untrustworthy and otherwise. So the key question stirring around the much discussed U.S Religious Landscape Survey released in late February by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life is what tale does it state about the state of the union.

For some, the story of this survey, based on interviews in multiple languages with more than 35,000 adults, is the strength of American Religion.

Not too long ago, I wrote that American atheism was going the way of the freak show. As books by Christopher Hitchens and other "new atheists" climbed the best seller lists, I caught a lot of flak for that prophecy. But atheist make up only 1.6% of respondents to this survey....[70]

”

Alister McGrath indicates that interest in the "God question" saw a surge due to the New Atheism movement.[71] Google trends data shows there was a significant surge for the search "God" in 2009 to 2012 in the United States and in the world.[72]

I'm not sure there is anything in this movement worth saving. Hitchens is dead. Dawkins simply doesn't have the energy for this sort of thing anymore. Harris went his own way. And Dennett just kind of blended into the background. So what do you think when the largest gathering of the nonreligious in history pulls in... I don't know. Maybe 2,000 people. Is there anything worth saving?[73]

”

Stephen LeDrew wrote at Oxford University Press's Academic Insights for the Thinking World website:

“

The ten-year anniversary of the publication of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion is approaching, and it has already been over ten years since Sam Harris published The End of Faith.

Social science in general has not yet fully appreciated the significance of the New Atheism and has tended not to take it very seriously, with the exception of those working in the new sub-discipline of secularity studies. But whatever one might think of the New Atheists’ ideas, an honest appraisal would recognize that they have had a significant and lasting impact.

They should be remembered for catalyzing a movement for religious dissent and inspiring atheists to come together and find a voice in American public life. But there’s a much darker side to the legacy of the New Atheism that stems from its imperialist and xenophobic tendencies, to say nothing of some thinly veiled Social Darwinism and arguments for eugenics. Sam Harris in particular is now known more for supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine and ethnic profiling at airport security than for his science-based critique of religious faith. Richard Dawkins’ personal legacy has taken a heavy hit in the past few years, as his rambling criticisms of feminism and Muslim “barbarians” on Twitter have led to charges of sexism, racism, and general arrogance and intolerance.[74]

”

On November 4, 2015, Elizabeth Bruenig published an article in the New Republic entitled Is the New Atheism Dead? which declared:

“

Coming at a time of sharpening political divisions over the issue of religion, it would seem the stage is set for the kind of religious versus anti-religious antagonism that gave birth to the New Atheist movement in the early aughts. But in significant ways, New Atheism seems to be on the wane, suggesting a new era of growing conciliation between the two sides.[75]

”

A common criticism of the "new atheism" is the shallowness of its material. For example, even atheist philosopher Michael Ruse stated that that Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion made him "embarrassed to be an atheist".[76]

The "New Atheism" largely has an unfavorable view outside the United States as well. The liberal leaning British newspaper The Guardian said about New Atheism:

“

Anti-faith proselytising is a growth industry. But its increasingly hysterical flag-bearers are heading for a spectacular failure...

These increasingly hysterical books may boost the pension, they may be morale boosters for a particular kind of American atheism that feels victimized - the latest candidate in a flourishing American tradition - but one suspects that they are going to do very little to challenge the appeal of a phenomenon they loathe too much to understand.[77]

”

In 2010, it was reported that The God Delusion sold 2,086,402 copies and 907,161 of those copies were sold in North America. Contrastly, in 2010, the evangelical ChristianRick Warren sold between 25,000,000 and 50,000,000 copies of his book The Purpose Driven Life.[78]

Letter to Richard Dawkins from Oxford atheist and academic Daniel Came

Christopher Hitchens' debate against William Lane Craig

Christopher Hitchens debated William Lane Craig at Biola University in 2009 in a videotaped debate.[81] The atheist Luke Muehlhauser wrote concerning the debate: "The debate went exactly as I expected. Craig was flawless and unstoppable. Hitchens was rambling and incoherent, with the occasional rhetorical jab. Frankly, Craig spanked Hitchens like a foolish child."[82]

Dr. Albert Mohler Jr. commentary on the New Atheism

Dr. Albert Mohler Jr.

Dr. Alfred Mohler Jr. describes some of the key attributes of the "New Atheism":

“

Now, WIRED magazine comes out with a cover story on atheism for its November 2006 issue. In "The New Atheism," WIRED contributing editor Gary Wolf explains that this newly assertive form of atheism declares a very simple message: "No heaven. No hell. Just science."...

Wolf accomplishes a great deal in his article, thoughtfully introducing the work of militant atheists such as Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett. At the same time, he probes more deeply into the actual meaning of the New Atheism as a movement and a message.

At the beginning of his article, he gets right to the point: "The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking."[84]

Despite his esophageal cancer, when asked by interviewer Charlie Rose if in retrospect he would have engaged in heavy drinking and smoking knowing his present cancer condition, the late new atheist Christopher Hitchens said he think he would have done things the same.[85]